Consulting Services

As a professional urban designer and partner of the Planning and Design Firm Space Between Design Studio, I am a trained urbanist who specializes in creating walkable urban developments and analyzing existing places to find the barriers preventing livable, walkable urbanism. I can be reached at patrick [at] spacebtw.com

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

I don't buy this. The fundamental flaw in "studies" and projections like these, basically all of economic forecasting, is that they take one data set and extrapolate it over time. The problem is with these types of things is that no line continues on forever. Over a long enough period of time, they begin to resemble more of a wavy sine curve. In this case, rising energy costs, one that I can suggest with fair amount of certainty that no magic bullet exists and allows us to be fat, happy, and stupid with our organizational and lifestyle decisions, to maintain our sedentary lifestyle making us a country full of porkers.

VMTs have peaked two years ago. I believe we hit rock bottom at that point. The economics of our disastrous last fifty years are still lagging behind but I believe that we have seen the light. We are getting out of our cars, riding bikes, reconnecting with our surroundings and community. We have discovered that that glorious lifestyle of sitting in traffic and watching television was actually quite banal. We are humans and we have a fundamental need for social and physical activities and we are beginning to rediscover our human nature and the joys of life.

Walkably Quotable

"The American love affair with the car...it's an awful lot like Stockholm Syndrome." ~ Me.In the Sixties the philosopher Ivan Illich showed that the amount of energy invested into cars and road infrastructure would be sufficient to cover the distance by foot - and in a considerably more beautiful and peaceful environment.

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In the Sixties, the philosopher Ivan Illich showedthat the amount of energy invested into cars and road infrastructure would be sufficient to cover the distance by foot - and in a considerably more beautiful and peaceful environment.